Architect, painter of mountain ranges and volcanoes, master of engraving (in his opinion, “the most democratic of artistic expressions”), muralist (his works are national monuments), painter of covers for the books of Nicanor Parra, Miguel Archi and José Donoso, and the chronicles of Violeta Parra and Quillabayon; Creator of Taller 99, director of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Chile, before and after the Pinochet dictatorship; Actor in the film Costa Gavras State of siege He was awarded the President Patricio Aylwin Medal in 1993, the year of his death. Nemesio Antunez It is a reference for Latin American art. He was born on May 4, 1918 in Santiago, Chile.
“My pictorial goal is: to put life experience and technical expertise at the service of Chilean reality,” said Antunez, who was responsible for transmitting the teachings of his profession and bringing art closer to citizens. Pioneer, hosted the TV show Be careful with art.
Starting Wednesday, the tenth of this month, an exhibition of selections in Matta Cultural Center (corner corner of Avenida del Libertador, with entrance via Plaza Repubblica de Chile) pays homage to the city of Buenos Aires. Antunez Andes It brings together 51 works, including etchings, watercolors and oil paintings, spanning five decades of the influential artist’s creativity, from the late 1940s to the late 1980s.
The exhibition was created by the Nemesio Antunez Foundation and curated by Ramon Castillo, Guillermina Antunez (the artist’s youngest daughter) and Pablo Orellana. Also included are notebooks, work processes, newspaper articles, documents from the Nemesio Antúnez archive and a selection of phrases and reflections The artist on the walls of the Cultural Center of the Chilean Embassy.
“This exhibition is the result of a path that began in 2023, when we participated in the 47th edition of the International Book Fair in Buenos Aires, of which the city of Santiago was a guest – Orellana tells LA NACION -. On that occasion we saw the painting by Nemesio that belongs to the Chilean Embassy in Argentina and the idea of holding an exhibition immediately emerged. It is also the product of different wills, institutional and individual. The research process led us to discover the strong relationship that Antunez had with ArgentinaProfessional, which reflects the many exhibitions he held, and emotional, because of the bonds of friendship that developed during those trips. That’s when We realized that the regulating line should have the Andes mountain range as its center, as that backbone that unites us and is at the same time a barrier, a giant that we face every day.This tells us that when Chile and Argentina are in union it is because what unites us is infinitely stronger. “Having it held at the Mata Cultural Center is another unique thing, as the friendship and meetings between Mata and Antunez were lifelong.”
Antunez studied architecture at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and trained as an engraver at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York, where he exchanged experiences with artists such as Yves Tanguy, Roberto Matta, Marc Chagall, Joan Miro, Max Ernst, and Louise Bourgeois. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1957, received the Pablo Neruda Medal for Artistic and Cultural Merit, directed Chile’s MNBA in two terms (1969-1973 and 1990-1993) and served as his country’s cultural attaché in New York between 1964 and 1969, where he recorded interviews with artists and writers. In 1980, he received the Collection Award from the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
“In short, he returned to painting Chile from Chile, with a broader vision of the world, with other projections. Chile looks more visible from the outside, and can be measured better: here they are Mistral And Neruda. This means that the artist must live in Chile, but you have to go out to see it better.” Air Charterfrom 1988.
He considered himself “a painter of experiments, themes, and series; these do not follow one after another, they overlap; they do not end at a certain date, but continually reappear after ten or twenty years in another form, and sometimes two or three themes are found on the same canvas, The repertoire changes and evolves with the artist. You are not an artist if you remain static, rigid, and repetitive forever.
On several occasions, Antunez has exhibited his works in the country: at the Kaiser Competition, the Córdoba Biennale, the National Museum of Engraving, Rubber, Bonino and Carmen Wu Galleries and the National Museum of Fine Arts (MNBA). with Antunez de los Andesthe artist’s unique legacy is reunited with the Argentine audience.
“Nemesio Antunez found the key to his own language: Chile revealed itself to him as an epiphany that he had to explore with the skills he had acquired. -Notes MNBA Director Andres Duprat-. The tingling of blurred urban crowds visible from a skyscraper, the grounded production of the forefathers of Quinchamali ceramics, the dramatic impact of the earthquake that devastated Chile and the burning La Moneda Palace observed through the dialogue of broken glass with abstract and geometric spaces where he formulated new visual rules for postulating his concept of the world…” The MNBA collection includes a painting by Antunez, Grand Centraland silkscreen folder.
More information about the artist at the Nemesio Antúnez Foundation link.
To schedule
Antunez Andes It can be visited from December 10 to April 2026, and from Tuesday to Friday from 10 am to 6 pm. And on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. At the Mata Cultural Center (Zajal Corner Avenida del Libertador), with free admission.